Follow Rate - Twitter Follower and Friend Legitimacy

July 2, 2018

You might have noticed that many Twitter users follow a lot more people than those who follow them back. An immediate thought that comes to mind is: "What are these people doing?" The answer is simple; they are exploiting Twitter user sentiment to follow people who follow them! Their mentality might be: “If I were to follow 1000 then 100 are bound to follow me back". That might be the case, however, having people follow you that are not at all interested in your subject matter, will not lead to any profits and might even hinder others’ perception of your online profile.

To help you better identify and distinguish between your associations, we have assigned a Follow Rate to each Twitter user. A Follow Rate is a ratio between people that follow a person divided by the number of people this person follows. The chart below shows a few examples and their meaning of the different Follow Rates that may be assigned to a Twitter user:

Followers

Friends

Follow Rate

Conclusion

1000

100

0.1

Really good

100

1000

10

Very suspicious

1000

1000

1

OK, person probably follows every back

Follow Rate of 1+ signals that this user might be involved in spamming or crowd chasing.

We have created 2 charts (one for followers and one for friends) that will allow you to keep an eye on the Follow Rate. You can find them on your Twitter dashboard, in the "Followers" section.